LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 5 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. ! 




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Rev. Robert Patterson, D.D. 



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PHILADELPHIA: 
PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 

No. 821 Chestnut Street. 







THE 



AMERICAN SABBATH. 



A SERMON 



BY THE 

Eev. ROBERT PATTERSON, D.D., 

OP CHICAaO, ILL. 



'1 



PHILADELPHIA : 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 
No. 821 CHESTNUT STREET. 













Tbe Library 

Ob Congress 



WASHINGTON 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by 

THE TRUSTEES OF THE 

PKESBYTERTAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Eastern District 
of Pennsylvania. 



Westcott & Thomson, 
Stereotypers, Philada. 



THE AMERICAN SABBATH, 



" Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all 
the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended 
his work which he had made ; and he rested on the 
seventh day from all his work v/hich he had made. And 
God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it : because 
that in it he had rested from all his work which God 
created and made." — Genesis ii. 1-4. 

Law is naturally repulsive. It offends our 
native independence to submit our wills to 
the will of another. For law demands sub- 
mission before one knows the reason for it. 
Indeed^ this is the difference between law and 
persuasion^ that law assumes the inability of 
many of the people to comprehend the reasons 
of enactments^ and the necessity of obedience 
without such knowledge. Hence the majority 
of every community, women, children, etc., 
are not consulted in the making of laws, and 

3 



4 THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 

even the voters repose the trust of legislation 
in the hands of statesmen supposed to be wiser 
on this subject than those who have not studied 
law. In monarchical countries laws are made 
with even less reference to the will of those 
who shall obey them. In the kingdom of 
heaven, where the highest perfection of 
wisdom exists in the Lawgiver, and especially 
in the law given to the human race in its in- 
fancy, there is no question raised as to man^s 
willingness to submit to the divine commands. 
But, inasmuch as all true obedience is volun- 
tary, our divine Lawgiver takes the most 
effectual means of inducing our cheerful con- 
sent by giving us his Sabbath law embodied 
in the most cogent form of his ow^n example 
of labour and rest. By this example the Creator 
has given the law of the Sabbath to all his 
creatures — not to tlie Jewish nation merely, 
w^hich did not exist for centuries afterwards — 
but to Adam and all his posterity ; and not 
to the human race alone, but to all other 
orders of beings composed of material bodies 
and rational souls, in all worlds acquainted 



THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 5 

with this divine example. Tlie sons of God, 
who shouted for joy on the completion of the 
newest world of God^s ancient universe^ were 
as much instructed by this divine example 
of alternate labour and repose as Adam. There 
is no other right of humanity chartered to us 
by such a sacred sanction. Neither the sacred- 
ness of property, nor of life, nor of marriage, 
is sheltered under the glorious Shekinah of 
that divine example, which glorifies the day 
of sacred rest. But lest it might seem too 
great a presumption for man to enter into this 
divine Sabbatism, it is added, ^^and God 
blessed the seventh day and sanctified it^^ 
— set it apart from common to sacred uses, 
and made it an occasion of bestowing his 
blessing on those who thus observed it. The 
divine institution of a seventh day of sacred 
rest after six days of labour is here declared 
to be coeval with the human race, and a 
God-given right of all men. I am aware that 
this is denied by some, who allege that the 
Sabbath was a purely Jewish institution, 
unknown to men before the exodus of Israel, 
1* 



b THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 

and therefore bound up with the fortunes of 
that people^ and vanishing like their other 
local and national usages. They endeavour to 
evade this text by alleging that Moses wrote 
proleptically ; that is, that he made a mistake 
in narrating God\s rest at this period ; that 
there was no such rest as here narrated ; that 
the whole narrative of the six days' work of 
creation is contradicted by modern science; 
and that there is no mention of the observance 
of the Sabbath in the subsequent history till 
the exodus. 

I shall not here enter on the question of the 
truth of Moses' account of the creation of all 
things in the beginning, and the subsequent 
and distinct work of the making of this world 
into a habitable abode for man in the six days 
of the Mosaic narrative, which are both nar- 
rated in my text — created and made. With 
the empty theories of scientific men w^e have 
here nothing to do ; but I allege that no fact 
of science has been proved to contradict the 
Books of Moses. I make this assertion, not 
rashly, but after twenty-five years' observation 



THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 7 

of the progress of the physical sciences^ and 
an examination of all the alleged anti-biblical 
facts of Astronomy, Physical Geography^ 
Physiology, Ethnology, Phrenology, Geology^ 
and Historical Criticism. Xo man has yet 
established any fact of science contradictory 
of the Bible narrative. Misrepresentations 
of the Bible and misrepresentations of science 
we have in great abundance ; but no proof 
that Moses lied. Till this is proved we accept 
Moses^ account as true. The account he gives 
us here is, that God rested on the seventh 
day. He repeats the statement in the Fourth 
Commandment. This fact would be no more 
weakened by the subsequent neglect of man- 
kind to imitate God^s example of Sabbath- 
keeping, if that was the fact, than by their 
neglect of any other part of a holy life. The 
authority of a divine example and institution 
depends not on man^s obedience. This alleged 
neglect of the patriarchs to observe the Sab- 
bath is not proved. The omission of any 
notice of their observance of such a tranquil 
institution by Moses^ in his brief notices of 



8 THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 

the most remarkable events of a period of 
near three thousand years, is no proof of their 
omission of its observance. 

But the allegation of the omission of refer- 
ence to this institution is incorrect. There 
are many references to it, all the more em- 
phatic that they are not formal, but incidental. 
To what else are we to trace the sacred ness 
of the number seven ? — a sacredness recognized 
by God himself, when he says, " vengeance 
shall be taken on Cain^s murderer seven-fold,'^ 
i, e. a vengeance which, having fully satisfied 
itself, brings rest to the soul. Why should 
the beasts designed for sacrifice come into the 
ark by sevens ? Whence the arrangement of 
the years of famine and plenty in Egypt by 
sevens ? To what else can the seven days of 
the Passover week refer? All this is not 
mere human invention; it is God's speech ; it 
is God^s symbolism. But it would have been 
unintelligible to man without the previous 
consecration of the week of seven days : with 
that institution in existence, it is perfectly 
plain and natural. Such a week was well 



THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 9 

known to Xoali. God said to him, ^^Yet 
seven days and I will cause it to rain on the 
earth/^ Xoah sends out his raven and his 
dove after intervals of seven days. Laban 
and Jacob were well acquainted with the 
week. Job's friends sat down to comfort him 
seven days. Joseph mourned for his father 
seven days. The prevalence of the week of 
seven days, and of the dedication of the 
seventh day to the worship of the chief deity 
among the various nations of the earth, proves 
its antiquity. Thus, the Greeks and Romans, 
and natives of Western Asia, and our own 
ancestors, dedicated that day to the sun. 
From China to Peru, the division of time 
into weeks attests the ancient and common 
origin of the institution, and refutes those 
who maintain that the Sabbath is a purely 
Jewish institution. 

1. The Sahhsith. then is a jjrimeval and cath' 
olic institution. For the example of God is not 
only the highest authority ; it is also of the 
most universal and perpetual influence, inas- 
much as it indicates that Sabbath rest is 



10 THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 

founded in the very nature bestowed upon us 
by our Creator, and in the relations which 
he sustains to us. The right to labour six 
days, and to rest the seventh, is here repre- 
sented as a natural, inalienable right of man, 
bestowed on him by his Creator,. and fenced 
in by the most sacred sanctions of religion. 

I am perfectly warranted, then, in taking 
as the subject of this discourse, not the Jew- 
ish Sabbath, which was a national institution, 
nor the Christian Sabbath, which is a re- 
ligious privilege; but the natural right of 
any man, and of every man, without respect 
to his nationality or to his religion, to rest 
from labour on the weekly Sabbath. I allege 
that the Chinese, and the Hindoo, and the 
Mohammedan, and the infidel, no less than 
the Jew or the Christian, have here the 
declaration of a God-given right to rest one 
day in seven, of which no man may deprive 
them, and of which men may no more deprive 
themselves than they may deprive themselves 
of their God-given rights to life and liberty. 
And since this glorious American Union 



THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 11 

admits to its privileges every child of our 
common Father^ not to rob him of his God- 
given rights^ but to protect him in their 
enjoyment J to throw around the weak and the 
ignorant the mantle of loving protection and 
lawful power derived from the great Law- 
giver (for there is no power but of God), and 
since, with common consent, since the begin- 
ning of our Republic, our people, our legisla- 
tors, our judges, our governors, and our 
presidents, from George Washington to Abra- 
ham Lincoln, have publicly vindicated the 
people's right to the weekly day of sacred 
rest, it is proper to designate it the American 
Sabbath. 

The attempt is now being made to procure 
a reversal of this national acknowledgment 
of the Sabbath ; to repeal the laws forbidding 
common labour on that day, and thus to make 
it a purely religious institution, like the sacra- 
ments, to be observed by those who desire to 
observe it, and to be disregarded by others. 
The proposal, indeed, is not in so many 
words to abolish Sabbath rest and recreation ; 



12 THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 

it is^ in words^ a proposal to allow a large 
portion of the people to spend the day in 
revelry as a day of amusement; but, in or- 
der to do this, it is found necessary to repeal 
the law forbidding common labour, because 
amusement even cannot be carried on without 
common labour. The saloon-keeper must 
labour in his vocation, and the stoker, and 
the conductor, and the brakesman, and the 
engine-driver, and the steamboat crew, and 
the musicians, and the confectioner, and the 
milliner, and the hair-dresser, and the wash- 
erwoman, the circus troupe, the dancers, and 
the actors and actresses, and all the host of 
amusement-makers, must labour very hard for 
the recreation of the rest of the people on 
Sabbath. But it would be manifestly absurd 
to suppose that the rum-seller, and the gam- 
bler, and the actor should enjoy a liberty for 
their vocations denied to the printer, or to 
the carpenter, or the butcher, or to any other 
honest labourer. If it is lawful for these 
demoralizing professions to ply their crafts on 
the Sabbath, it is much more lawful for the 



THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 1^ 

mechanic to do an honest day's work. The 
Liquor Dealers' Associations perceive the 
force of this argument, and, accordingly, they 
ask a repeal of the law forbidding common 
labour on Sabbath. They allege that the law 
is now violated by multitudes, but that its 
existence is some hindrance to general Sab- 
bath-breaking, and, therefore, they ask its 
repeal. They began, seven years ago, by 
asserting Sunday revelry, and now they de- 
mand Sunday labour. The tree bears its 
proper fruit. All experience shows that the 
Sabbath rest from labour has never been 
enjoyed by any people who spent the day in 
revelry. The sense of the sacredness of this 
as a divine institution, a God-given right^ 
lies at the basis of the enjoyment of its privi- 
leges. Wherever these sanctions have been 
removed there is no rest for the people on 
Sabbath. Competition in business would 
soon compel tradesmen and mechanics to 
work seven days in the week, were the Sab- 
bath law repealed. The desire for the abo- 
lition of the law forbidding Sabbath labour 



14 THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 

is^ then, simply a desire to compel seven 
days' labour every week. 

Let it be distinctly understood that the 
Sabbath laws of these States simply forbid 
common labour, the keeping open of tip- 
pling-houses, and any rout or sport which 
disturbs any congregation of worshippers on 
the Sabbath. The law does not say that any 
man shall go to this church, or to that church, 
or to any church ; that he shall stay in his 
house, or read his Bible, or sing hymns, or 
hear sermons ; that he shall not eat a good din- 
ner if he can get it, nor drink beer, nor smoke, 
nor read newspapers or novels, nor hear music, 
if he is so inclined. The civil law does not 
forbid social parties, nor card-playing, nor 
dancing, nor gymnastics, either in the house 
or in the field, provided, only, that no con- 
gregation is disturbed at worship by such 
revelry. I am not now commending such a 
mode of spending the Sabbath, nor stating 
what God^s law says on the subject. I am 
stating the law of the State — a law which 
certainly infringes no man^s liberty of con- 



THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 15 

science^ and which leaves the broadest room 
for every kind of recreation compatible with 
the preservation of the labourer's day of rest, 
at all. Less than this the Commonwealth 
cannot do without abnegation of its right to 
preserve the lives of its people. 

2. The Sabbath rest is necessary to preserve 
the lives of the people. The law of periodicity 
controls every known substance in the uni- 
verse. It is seen in the full change and 
quarters of the moon, in the rising and set- 
ting of the sun, in the orbit of the earth, in 
the consequent succession of day and night, 
and of spring, summer, autumn, and win- 
ter ; in the inspiration and expiration of 
our breath, in the relaxation and contraction 
of our muscles, in the alternations of labour 
and repose which are thus necessitated. Not 
only man — the brute creation, and even in- 
animate things, are subject to this law\ No 
substance can endure eternal motion. Even 
the winds must sometimes rest. A bar of 
iron continually hammered, even with the 
slightest force, wdll become first hard as steel, 



16 THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 

then brittle as glass^ and eventually fly into 
fragments. The superintendent of the North- 
western Railway of England reports^ after 
tabulating the performance of over twelve 
hundred locomotives and a corresponding 
number of trains for many years, that the con- 
tinual, unresting working of a locomotive so 
crystallizes the axles that dangerous and 
costly accidents from sudden fracture neces- 
sarily result; that it is necessary to allow 
these machines a day's rest in the week ; — an 
emphatic testimony coming from a Sabbath- 
breaking railroad. 

The law of periodical rest applies to all 
working animals. Bianconi, the celebrated 
Irish car proprietor, calculates that his 
horses will run eight miles an hour for six 
days in the week better than six miles an 
hour for seven davs in the week, and that 
there is thus a saving of thirteen per cent, of 
animal life by allowing them to rest on Sab- 
bath ; adding, '' I am persuaded that man 
cannot be wiser than his Maker.'' On the 
question of endurance, it is now settled that 



THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 17 

horses which become exhausted in omnibus 
and street-car work with five and a half 
years of Sunday labour will last eight years 
of six-day labour. It is thus a demonstrated 
fact of natural history that working animals 
need not only a nightly repose, but also a 
weekly rest from labour ; and that if deprived 
of this weekly rest their lives are shortened. 
In shorty seven-day work is killing work for 
the horse or the ox. It is worthy of note 
that this fact was known to the Author of 
the Sabbath, who therefore commanded that 
the ox and the ass should rest on Sabbath as 
well as men. Were there no other ground 
for its existence, the prevention of cruelty to 
animals would be a sufficient justification of 
the Sabbath law. 

When we come to inquire whether the 
human body is subject to the same laws of 
physiology which regulate the preservation 
of all other animals, physiologists assure us 
that man is no exception to tlie universal law 
of periodicity of labour and of rest ; that the 
law of rest is as impe;:ative as the law of food 

2* 



18 THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 

or the law of breath ; that the nightly repose 
does not restore the balance of the system ; 
that continuous mental labour ends in idiocy 
or insanity^ and unbroken bodily labour in 
premature old age or sudden death ; and that 
the weekly rest of the Sabbath is necessary to 
the preservation of life. The testimonies to 
this effect are too numerous to be transcribed. 
I shall only quote a few leading American 
and British authorities, and this Avill be 
sufficient, since there is no contradictory testi- 
mony. The medical profession is as unani- 
mous in asserting the necessity of the Sab- 
bath's rest to the working man's life as in 
asserting his need of air or food. 

Dr. Parre, after many years' practice in 
London, gave the following sworn testimony 
before a committee of the House of Com- 
mons : 

"All men, of whatever class, who must 
necessarily be occupied six days in the week, 
should abstain on the seventh ; and in the 
course of life would assuredly gain by giving 
to their bodies the repose, and to their minds 



THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 19 

the change of icleas^ suited to the day for 
which it was appointed by heavenly wisdom. 
I have frequently observed the death of 
medical men from continued exertion. I 
have advised the clergyman, in lieu of his 
Sabbath, to rest one clay in the week ; it 
forms a continual prescription of mine. I 
have seen many destroyed by their duties on 
that day ; and to preserve them I have 
frequently suspended them for a season from 
the discharge of their duties. The working 
of the mind in one continuous train of 
thought is destructive of life in the most 
distinguished class of society, and senators 
themselves stand in need of reform in that 
particular. I have observed many of them 
destroyed by neglecting this economy of 
life.'^ 

The labouring classes, as we might expect, 
are no less in need of rest. Six hundred and 
forty-one London physicians unite their testi- 
mony to the necessity of the Sabbath in a 
petition to Parliament against legalizing Sab- 
bath desecration. They say : 



20 THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 

" Your petitioners, from their acquaintance 
with the labouring classes and with the laws 
which regulate the human economy^ are con- 
vinced that a seventh day of rest, instituted 
by God and coeval with the existence of man^ 
is essential to the bodily health and mental 
vigour of men in every station of life.'^ 

Of American physiologists, Carpenter, in 
his letter to Granger, says : 

" My own experience is very strong as to 
the importance of complete rest and change 
of thought once in the week.'^ 

Dr. Mussey, in a formal physiological ex- 
position of the subject, declares: 

" Under the due observance of the Sabbath, 
life would, on the average, be prolonged more 
than one-seventh of the whole period ; that 
is, more than seven years in fifty. ^^ 

Statistics prove that the loss of life by Sab- 
bath drudgery and general toil is as much as 
fifty per cent, in England among the working 
classes ; the average town life of gentlemen 
being forty-two, of labourers, twenty-one 
years ; in the country, gentlemen fifty, labour- 



THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 21 

ers thirty-five years. Increase of rest is 
increase of life to the worker. 

The State, then, has the same right to pro- 
tect the Sabbath rest of the people by law as 
she has to protect their lives. The same 
reason which authorizes ' the prevention and 
removal of nuisances injurious to the health 
and dangerous to the lives of the citizens — 
though they may be profitable to certain 
classes — authorizes the .suppression of Sab- 
bath labour. Sabbath labour, cutting short 
human life more than one-seventh, as six 
hundred and fifty physicians testify, would 
be equivalent to three hundred murders 
yearly in Chicago alone. Has not the State 
a right to prevent three hundred murders ? 

It may be said that this labour is volun- 
tary on the part of the Sabbath drudges. It 
is mockery to call the compulsion of necessity 
voluntary. But suppose it were voluntary ; 
has any man a right to commit suicide ? Is 
it not the highest crime known to our lavrs ? 
Has not the State a right to arrest a man 
contemplating self-destruction, and to prevent 



22 THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 

the crime? And if his crime contemplates 
not only injury to his own life^ but the injury 
of his neighbour's life also, has not the State 
the right to prevent that injury? Why not 
as well say that a man has a right to import 
cholera or yellow fever ? 

3. The State has the right to prevent Grime 
and to forbid provocations thereto. Hence the 
very common prohibition by our legislatures 
of keeping open taverns on election day, and 
the insertion of clauses in the charters of 
colleges forbidding the sale of liquor in their 
vicinity, and the prohibition of the sale of 
lottery tickets. Sunday drinking has been 
demonstrated by long experience to be a 
fruitful nursery of crime. Take, for example, 
the experience of New York during this year, 
1867 — a year of Sabbath rest — and the past 
years of Sunday revelry. In 1859 the 
grand jury made the following presentment: 
" The grand jury cannot close their labours 
without presenting to the court and to the 
public the important fact that a very large 
portion of the business which has occupied 



THE AMERICAN SABEATH. 23 

its attention has arisen from the sale and use 
of intoxicating liquors. Nearly all the cases 
for murder and assault and battery which 
have been investigated (and the number is 
great) have been found to spring from that 
cause/^ From the records of the prisons, it 
appears that of the twenty-seven thousand 
eight hundred and forty-five commitments to 
prison in JN'ew York in 1857, twenty-three 
thousand eight hundred and seventeen were 
persons of intemperate habits, and of these 
nine thousand seven hundred and twenty-six 
were females. More than five-sixths of the 
criminals had their training in the saloons, 
and more than one-third of the whole num- 
ber were drunken women ! No wonder the 
grand jury says, '' With very few exceptions, 
the crimes charged have their origin in re- 
sorts and dens of iniquity, where intoxicating 
liquors are sold and drank.'' The sale and 
consumption of liquor on Sabbath, and the 
resulting drunkenness and crime, are double 
those of other days, in consequence of the 
much greater number of men released from 



24 THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 

work. On four Sundays in April, 1866, 
before the closing of the liquor-shops under 
the new Excise law, the number of arrests was 
five hundred and eighty-three ; on four Sun- 
days in May, when they were closed, the 
arrests were reduced to two hundred and 
fifty-seven — a reduction of three hundred 
and twenty-six, or over four thousand per 
annum ! Will any one venture to assert 
that legislators overstep their province in 
preventing four thousand crimes per annum ? 
The chaplain of Clerkenwell prison testified 
before the British House of Commons: ^^I 
do not recollect a single case of capital offence 
where the party had not been a Sabbath- 
breaker. Indeed, I may say in reference to 
prisoners of all classes, that in nineteen cases 
out of twenty they have not only neglected 
the Sabbath, but all religious ordinances/^ 
Of the one hundred thousand criminals 
under his care during eighteen years, he 
testified that ^^the leading causes of crime 
had been impatience of parental restraint, 
violation of the Sabbath, evil associations, 



THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 25 

especially with abandoned females^ and 
drunkenness arising from attending public- 
bouses and beer-gardens ;^^ the very associa- 
tions and institutions which the Liquor Deal- 
ers' Associations are now labouring to foster by 
the repeal of Sabbath laws. The law-abiding 
people have the right to restrain these men 
from making criminals^ and from burdening 
us with the enormous costs of penitentiaries 
and officers. The prevention of crime is the 
very first design of law. 

In the year in which the act was passed 
closing public houses on Sabbath throughout 
Scotland, a bill was, in the same session of 
Parliament, brought in and passed on behalf 
of the municipal authorities of Edinburgh, 
to enable them to raise and charge on the 
inhabitants of that city a sum of twelve 
thousand pounds for enlarging the jail, which 
had been found wholly insufficient for the 
number of offenders in that locality. Both 
bills, having passed, came into operation at 
the end of the session, and the public-houses 
were closed on Sabbaths, which was attended 
3 



26 THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 

with such success that it was found by the 
end of the year that the number of criminal 
offences in the city was reduced by one-third. 
The municipal authorities, finding this re- 
sult, refrained for a time from raising the 
twelve thousand pounds authorized by the 
act; and finding subsequently that the num- 
ber of offences was still further reduced, they 
gave up the thought of enlarging the jail or 
of raising the money authorized to be assessed 
for that purpose, whereby the citizens escaped 
the heavy charge which would have been 
laid on them; and now, after the lapse of 
several years, that jail, which was before so 
insufficient for the large number of prisoners 
to be crowded into it, is so much too large 
for the reduced number requiring to be con- 
fined there that actually one wing of it is 
entirely vacant, the authorities are consider- 
ing to what purpose that wing shall be 
applied, and it is proposed to apply it for an 
asylum for females reduced to a state of 
debility by former excess and intoxication. 
4. The Sabbath is necessary to the preser- 



THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 27 

vatian of our republican institutions. Govern- 
ment is based on the social nature of man, 
and contemplates him as a member of society. 
Now^ society implies a willingness on the 
part of its individual members to restrain 
their natural selfishness for the general bene- 
fit. Government, however, supposes some 
degree of unwillingness and selfishness, and 
the necessity of suppressing it by force; — 
jails, penitentiaries, armies, all attest the need 
of force. The greater the amount of selfish- 
ness in a comDiunity, the greater the force 
necessary to suppress it. Hence the maxim, 
"a degraded people and a strong govern- 
ment;'^ meaning thereby a powerful army. 
Ignorance is the mother and nurse of selfish- 
ness. The more ignorant the man, the more 
passionate and self-willed. The first step 
towards civil government is self-government, 
and that is a process of education. Let any 
class of men be deprived of opportunities of 
education, and kept constantly occupied in 
daily labour, their native animal instincts, 
uncorrected by education, will so develop 



28 THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 

themselves that they will become selfish, 
sensual^ vicious and brutish. They can only 
be governed by force of arms and fear of 
punishment. Five millions of soldiers are 
required now to preserve the peace of Europe. 
A vicious people necessitates a despotic gov- 
ernment. No man would dream of a repub- 
lican form of government for the penitentiary. 
Even where ignorance has not developed into 
vice^ we realize the fact that it is a dis- 
qualification for the exercise of government, 
and refuse children the exercise of the ballot. 
Intelligence and virtue are the fundamental 
requirements of a republican government. 
If the people of any country are ignorant and 
vicious^ a republican form of government is 
an impracticable absurdity there. The ex- 
perience of Greece^ of Rome^ of France, of 
Mexico, has satisfied all reflecting minds of 
this fact. 

But continuous labour forbids popular in- 
telligence. The great majority of mankind 
must labour with their hands for daily bread ; 
this is the law of heaven, and such is the 



THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 29 

observed fact. Their daily labour is always 
so prolonged that little or no time, and less 
disposition, to prosecute mental labour remain 
after the fatigues of the day. Very few of 
the labouring classes ever obtain anything 
more than the rudiments of an education in 
their childhood — the power of reading and 
writing- — by which they may acquire neces- 
sary information in after life, if they can 
have opportunity to use it, and will make 
the attempt. But if they are compelled to 
toil seven days in the week, they can have no 
such opportunity, and must continue mere 
animals, without any capacity for learning 
their rights or their duties as citizens, or the 
motives by Avhich they should be influenced 
to love their neighbours as themselves. And 
this mental degradation reacts again on the 
animal frame, and promotes filth and fever. 
AVe have unfortunately an abundance of 
practical demonstrations of this principle in 
the European emigrants who now come to 
our shores to escape the miseries of the degra- 
dation of the people there. Imagine a New 

3* 



80 THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 

England Puritan taking off his hat to a land- 
lord, or paying taxes to an Episcopal church, 
or asking my Lord Somebody^s leave to fish 
in the river ! 

The Sabbath law gives the time necessary 
for the education of the working man. It 
affords him a w^eekly opportunity of culti- 
vating his powers of thought, of cherishing 
the family and social affections, of consider- 
ing himself something more than a working 
machine, or than an eating and drinking 
animal, or than the born serf and ploughman 
of a landed proprietor, or the drudge of a 
capitalist. It affords the opportunity, if he 
will use it, of considering the most elevating 
subjects of thought, and of studying the most 
attractive examples of heroism, patriotism 
and benevolence under the most advantageous 
circumstances. 

The eminent physiologist. Draper — whom 
no one who has read his various, learned 
arid Rationalistic writings will accuse of any 
leanings towards Puritanism — bears the fol- 
lowing emphatic and eloquent testimony to 



THE AMERICAN SABBi\TH. 31 

the intellectual and social influence of the 
Sabbath : 

'' Out of the numberless blessings which 
have thus been conferred on our race by the 
Church, the physiologist may be permitted 
to select one for remark, which in an eminent 
manner has contributed to our physical and 
moral well-being : It is the institution of 
the Sabbath day. Not that this originated 
with, or is peculiar to, the Christian faith, 
since, as is known to all, it dates from the 
remotest times, and was directly adopted from 
the Hebrew ceremonial. Its sanctification 
and enforcement by the Church was at once 
an object important in the highest degree in 
ecclesiastical polity and a boon to all classes 
of men; for, in whatever position in life we 
may be placed, it is needful for us to have an 
opportunity of rest. No man can for any 
length of time pursue one avocation or one 
train of thought without mental, and there- 
fore bodily, injury — nay, without insanity. 
The constitution of the brain is such that it 
must have its time of repose. Periodicity is 



32 THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 

stamped upon it. Nor is it enough that it is 
awake and in action by day, and in the 
silence of night obtains rest and repose ; that 
same periodicity which belongs to it as a 
whole belongs to all its constituent parts. 
One portion of it cannot be called into in- 
cessant action without the risk of injury. Its 
different regions, devoted to different func- 
tions, must have their separate times of rest. 
The excitement of one part must be coin- 
cident with a pause in the action of another. 
It is not possible for mental equilibrium to 
be maintained with one idea or one mono- 
tonous mode of life. There is a necessity 
even for men of great intellectual endow- 
ments, whose minds are often strained to the 
utmost, to fall back on other pursuits ; and 
thus it will always be that one seeks refuge 
in the pleasures of quiet country life, 
another in foreign travel, another in so- 
cial amusements. Pitt sought a relaxa- 
tion from the cares of politics in the excite- 
ment of the chase. Davy found a relief and 
consolation in the rod and line. And among 



THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 33 

men whose lot is cast in the lowest condition, 
wdiose hard destiny it is to spend their whole 
lives in the pursuit of their daily bread, with 
one train of thought and one unvarying 
course of events, the same principle impe- 
riously applies. It is often said that the 
pleasures of religion are wholly prospective, 
and to be realized only in another world; 
but in this there is a mistake, for those con- 
solations commence even here, and temper 
the bitterness of fate. The virtuous labourer, 
though he may be ground down with the 
oppressions of his social condition, is not with- 
out his relief; at the anvil, the loom, or even 
the bottom of the mine, he is leading a double 
existence ; the miseries of the body find a 
contrast in the calm of the soul ; the warfare 
without is compensated by the peace within ; 
the dark night of life here serves only to 
brighten the glories of the prospect beyond. 
Hope is the daughter of despair. And thus 
a kind Providence so overrules events that it 
matters not in what station we may be, 
wealthy or poor, intellectual or lowly, a 



84 THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 

refuge is always at hand, and the mind, worn 
out with one thing, turns to another, and its 
physical excitement is followed by physical 
repose. By the enforcement of the Sabbath 
the Church gave effect to this providential 
system of physical and mental relief. Her 
chief strength lay in this, that she concerned 
herself with the common man, who never in 
the world's history before had any to watch 
over or to care for him. She humanized him 
by the devotional solemnities of a sacred day 
— a day of entire relief from toil. Ignorant 
and rude though he might be, it was not 
possible for him to enter her hoary temples 
without being made a better man. The 
atmosphere of rest, the twilight streaming 
through the painted windows, the prayer in 
an unknown tongue — the slow chanting of 
old hymns, or the swelling forth of those 
noble strains of music which, once heard, are 
graven in remembrance for ever, — these she 
had made, with more than worldly wisdom, 
the elements or incidents of public worship. 
She gratified the manly sense by asserting 



THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 35 

before her altar the equality of all men, by 
making the vain and transitory gradations 
of society disappear, and by teaching the rich 
and the poor, the great and the humble, their 
common dependence on the mercy of God/^ 

5. The State has a right to protect the 
Sabbath as an essential part of the religion of 
the people. Public worship is an indispen- 
sable part of that religion, and by common 
consent some common time must be allotted 
for it. In all Christian countries this is the 
same day which our State law protects. It is 
not necessary here to discuss the particular 
day of the week to be devoted to worship, as 
those with whom we now^ contend do not 
propose to change the day, but to abolish the 
Sabbath altogether, because it is a part of 
Christianity. We allege that for that very 
reason the State is bound to protect it. 

The allegation that the State has no right 
to interfere with the Sabbath, because it is 
sanctioned by religion, is utterly unfounded. 
Religious sanctions are applicable to many 
of the affairs of civil life, which are not, on 



86 THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 

that account^ outlawed by the legislature and 
jurisprudence of the republic. The oath, 
for instance, is a religious ordinance, an 
appeal to the Omniscient Judge of the living 
and the dead, instituted by God, and observed 
as a religious ordinance by all Christendom. 
Take away its religious character, and you 
take away all its influence and reduce it to a 
mere mockery. But shall we repeal all our 
legislation on the subject and cease to regard 
perjury as an aggravated crime, and declare 
the acts punishing it unconstitutional, because 
the oath is a religious ordinance, and the 
State has no right to meddle w^th religion ? 
So, also, marriage is a divine ordinance, in- 
stituted at the same time as the Sabbath, 
given to the same persons, and, like that, 
enforced by religious sanctions. But shall 
we comply with the wish of infidel citizens 
to consider it, therefore, as a purely religious 
institution, entirely voluntary in its nature, 
and binding only so long as the consciences 
of the parties shall pronounce desirable, but 
no longer obligatory than they themselves 



THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 37 

shall choose? This is, indeed, the doctrine 
of many of the same parties who now urge 
the repeal of the Sabbath law and of all laws 
recognizing Christianity in any way. They 
would have the laws regulating marriage re- 
pealed, and all men and women left at liberty 
to make and annul such contracts at their 
pleasure. Petitions to this effect have been 
circulated in the State, of New York ; and 
probably we shall be soon asked to legalize 
Free Love under the same pleas — of relieving 
the courts, of promoting public morality, and 
of non-interference with conscience. The 
principle is the same in the one case as in the 
other. No man has any higher right to his 
wife or to his life than to his Sabbath. It is 
a God-given, inalienable right, fenced in by 
the highest of all sanctions. So far from the 
religious sanctions of the Sabbath forming 
a reason for expelling it from the protection 
of civil law, this sacred character constitutes 
the highest reason for such protection. 

The Sabbath is that part of our common 
Christianity which brings before the people 



38 THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 

those principles of religion upon which gov- 
ernment is based, those supreme obligations 
to the All-seeing Disposer of life, upon a 
right regard to which all human law de- 
pends; for the sanctions of all human law 
are based upon the acknowledgment of the 
divine law by the people. Without this 
recognition of God's authority, the execution 
of a criminal could have no more weight 
than the slaughter of an ox, and an oath no 
more validity than a street peddler^s proc- 
lamation. Hence, all governments, even 
among the heathen, have recognized the 
natural necessity of religion ; and among all 
Christian people the Christian religion has, 
in one form or another, been embodied in 
their jurisprudence. Though no particular 
form of Christianity is exclusively recognized, 
and no sect is established and paid out of the 
public taxes, our government is not, there- 
fore, irreligious. It is a great mistake to 
suppose that ours is an infidel government. 
In truth, an infidel government is impossible, 
as France has demonstrated by bloody ex- 



THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 39 

peritnent* Ours is a Christian government. 
In the fundamental document of our national 
character^ the immortal Declaration of In- 
dependence, we explicitly recognized God as 
our Creator^ and derived our rights to life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of hapj)iness from 
him. We asserted the Christian idea of the 
equality of all men as a God-given right. 
We made our appeal to him as Supreme 
Ruler on the bench of justice of the world, 
and as our national Euler, by the solemn 
sanction of the oath, and by the wager of 
battle, the decision of which in our favour 
gave us national existence. We established 
our government for the maintenance of these 
God-given rights to life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness, and consequently for 
the maintenance of the Sabbath as essential 
to the life and liberty and happiness of the 
people. We refuse to acknowledge the right 
of any man or body of men to practice 
customs contrary to the morals of Chris- 
tianity, even upon the plea of liberty of 
conscience. We allow no conscientious right 



40 THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 

of the Chinese to sell his daughters, as the 
religion of Confucius commands. We pro- 
hibit the Mohammedan from his conscien- 
tious duty of putting infidels to the sword. 
We will not legalize the Mormon^s polygamy 
nor the Spiritualist's free love upon any plea 
of conscience. The Jew may not stone the 
false prophet or dreamer of dreams to death, 
according to the command of Moses. We 
refuse the infidel the right to establish his 
gambling hells, and we declare the sale of 
lottery tickets a crime punishable by law. 
We do all this because the governments of 
the United States of America are not Jewish 
governments, nor Mormon governments, nor 
Chinese governments, much less infidel gov- 
ernments, but Christian governments. Chris- 
tianity is the basis of the common law of the 
land. All our jurisprudence is founded on 
Christian morality, and has been so from the 
very foundation of our nation. The Sabbath 
law is a part of our national Christianity, 
and the attempt to repeal it is part of a 
systematic attempt, on the part of infidels, to 



THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 41 

deprive our nation of its Christian character, 
to introduce the Red Republic, to make 
America what France was in the days of 
Danton and Robespierre, and the Reign of 
Terror. But the decisions of our courts, with 
entire unanimity, oppose this infidel attempt. 
Judge Story, Judge Kent, and indeed all 
who have had occasion to deliver judgment 
on the matter — in whatever State of those 
which enact the Sabbath law — have decided 
that the Sabbath law is a part of our national 
Christianity and of our common law. 

The decision of the Supreme Court of New 
York, February Term, 1861, Justices Clerke, 
Sutherland and Allen, in the case of Gustav 
Lindenmiiller vs. The People, convicted under 
the act of April, 1860, of giving dramatic 
representations on Sunday, very fully and 
ably sustains the constitutionality of Sunday 
laws. We quote a few sentences from the 
elaborate opinion, which is understood to be 
written by Judge Allen : 

'' As a civil and political institution, the 
establishment and regulation of a Sabbath is 

4* 



42 THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 

within the just power of the civil govern- 
ment. Older than our government, the 
framers of the Constitution did not abolish, 
alter, or weaken its sanction, but recognized, 
as they might otherwise have established, it. 
All interests require national uniformity in 
the day observed, and that its observance 
should be so far compulsory as to protect 
those who desire and are entitled to the 
day. 

'^ As a civil institution, the sanction of the 
day is at the option of the legislature ; but it 
is fit that the Christian Sabbath should be 
observed by a Christian people, and it does 
not detract from the moral or legal sanction 
of a statute that it conforms to the law of 
God, as recognized by the great majority of 
the people. Existing here by common law, 
all that the legislature attempts to do is to 
regulate its observance. The common law 
recognizes the day ; contracts, land redemp- 
tion, etc., maturing on Sunday, must be per- 
formed on Saturday or Monday. Judicial 
acts on the Sabbath are mostly illegal. 



THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 43 

Work done on Sunday cannot be recovered 
for, etc. 

• " The Christian Sabbath is, then, one of 
the civil institutions of the State, to which 
the business and duties of life are by the 
common law made to conform and adapt 
themselves. Nor is it a violation of the 
rights of conscience of any that the Sabbath 
of the people, immemorially enjoyed, sanc- 
tioned by common law, and recognized in 
the Constitution, should be respected and 
protected by the law-making power. 

^^The existence of the Sabbath as a civil 
institution being conceded, as it must be, the 
right of the legislature to control and regulate 
it and its observance is a necessary sequence. 
Precedents are found in the statutes of every 
government really or nominally Christian, 
from the period of Athelstan to the present 
day. 

" Nearly all the States of the Union have 
passed laws against Sabbath-breaking, and 
prohibiting secular pursuits on that day ; and 
in none have they been held repugnant to 



44 THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 

the Constitution, with the exception of Cali- 
fornia; while in most States, the legislature 
has been upheld by the courts and sustained 
by well-reasoned opinions. 

^' The act now complained of compels no 
religious observance, and offences against it 
are punishable not as sins against God, but as 
injurious to society. It rests upon the same 
foundation as a multitude of other statutes — 
such as those against gambling, lotteries, 
horse-racing, etc — laws which do restrain the 
citizen, and deprive him of some of his 
rights ; but the legislature has the right to 
prohibit acts injurious to the public, subver- 
sive of the government, and which tend to 
the destruction of the morals of the people, 
and to disturb the peace and good order of 
society. It is exclusively for the legislature 
to determine what acts should be prohibited 
as dangerous to the community. 

'^ It is the right of the citizen to be pro- 
tected from offences against decency and 
against acts which tend to corrupt the morals 
and debase the moral sense of the community. 



THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 45 

It is the right of the citizen that the Sabbath, 
as a civil institution, should be kept in a way 
not inconsistent with its purpose and the 
necessity out of which it grew as a day of 
rest, rather than as a day of riot and disorder, 
which would be to overthrow it and render 
it a curse rather than a blessing. 

" But it is urged that it is the right of the 
citizen to regard the Sabbath as a day of 
innocent recreation and amusement. That is 
not innocent which may operate injuriously 
upon the morals of old or young, w^iich tends 
to interrupt the quiet worship of the Sabbath, 
and which grievously offends the moral sense 
of the community, and thus tends to a breach 
of the peace. It may well be that the legis- 
lature thought that a Sunday theatre, with 
its drinking saloons and its usual induce- 
ments to licentiousness and other kindred 
vices^ was not consistent with the peace, good 
order and safety of the city. They might 
well be of the opinion that such a place 
would be ^a nursery of vice, a school of 
preparation to qualify young men for the 



46 THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 

gallows and young women for the brothel/ 
But whatever the reason may have been^ it 
was a matter within the legislative discretion 
and power, and their will must stand as the 
reason of the law.'^ 

Judge Ludlow, of Pennsylvania, in the 
case of Jeandelle, speaks the same language: 

^' Christianity has been decided to be a part 
of the common law of Pennsylvania (Up- 
degrave vs. The Commonwealth, 11 Serg & 
Eawle, 394) ; and although it is so in a re- 
stricted or modified sense, yet its divine 
origin and truth are admitted ; and therefore 
it is not to be maliciously or openly resisted 
and blasphemed against, to the annoyance of 
believers or the injury of the public/^ 

He then goes on to cite the legislation and 
decisions of courts, all affirming the same 
principle ; among others. Chief Justice Lewis, 
in The Commonwealth vs, Johnston: 

^^ The Sabbath is a Christian institution, 
recognized by the common law, and the Con- 
stitution, and on this ground alone have the 



THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 47 

legislature a right to pass laws for its observ- 
ance/^ (2 Am. Law Reg. 529.) 

"By the common law of the Common- 
wealthy then^ every citizen is entitled to enjoy 
the first day of the week in undisturbed quiet 
and repose, that he may exercise his ' natural 
and indefeasible right to worship Almighty 
God according to the dictates of his own con- 
science f and whatever actual noise or disor- 
der hinders seriously or destroys altogether 
this inestimable right is and always has been 
a breach of the peace.^^ " The Sabbath is, as 
we have before said, a part of Christianity ; 
upon its peaceful observance Christianity in a 
great measure depends for its support. De- 
stroy this day, and a revolution of the 
most astounding character will be produced. 
Whatever conclusion may be arrived at upon 
the evidence submitted in the case before the 
court, we cannot assert as law^ a principle 
which must lead to the most disastrous re- 
sults, which must shake Christianity itself; 
which Christianity, in the expressive language 
of Judge Duncan, ' is not proclaimed by the 



48 THE AMERICAN SABBATH. 

commanding voice of any human superior, 
but expressed in the calm and mild accents 
of customary law. Its foundations are broad, 
and strongs and deep ; they are laid in the 
authority^ the interests and the affections of 
the people. Waiving all questions of here- 
after, it is the purest system of morality, the 
firmest auxiliary, and only stable support of 
all human laws.^ " 

It is the right, then, of the State to protect 
by law such a fundamental support of gov- 
ernment. This attack on the Sabbath is 
treason against the very foundations of gov- 
ernment. As such, let it be resisted by every 
American citizen. The American Sabbath 
is essential to American liberty, to our repub- 
lic, and to God's religion. 



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